December 1, 2009

I’ve been watching the press report on the violence in Melbourne with some interest over the past months. There has been no subtlety in the way we were being primed for an expansion of police powers. Violence splashed across the pages of The Herald Sun each week was guaranteed to provoke fear, outrage and a demand for solutions. What better way to ensure public acceptance of the ‘necessary’ draconian laws to curb the violence? Barely a heart beat later and the laws are before parliament…

POLICE will soon have sweeping powers to search people at random, including strip-search, even if there is no reasonable suspicion those targeted have done anything wrong.

The ”stop and search” tactic is part of a law and order crackdown set to be passed by State Parliament, despite the Government conceding that the legislation breaches the Victorian Human Rights Charter.

Legal experts have labelled the proposed laws, which will enable officers to strip-search children and the disabled, as draconian and a knee-jerk reaction to the problem of drunken violence.